Jewelry has been with humanity since the beginning as people have always felt the need to adorn themselves for a variety of reasons including a sense of individuality, beauty and simply as a means of attracting attention. Jewelry is a multi billion dollar worldwide business.
The ability to interchange, personalize and accessorize has always been a facet of the jewelry industry. It is an innate human desire to transform an item from an object one has purchased to an object that resonates with the owners personality, clothing or current moods. In modern times many different people have brought forward ideas to aid people in accomplishing this. Some of the recent ideas that are in the current market place are Italian Charm Link Bracelets and interchangeable bead bracelets. However, these items are complicated for the wearer to modify. The Italian Charm Link Bracelet, in particular, typically requires the use of a tool to force openings in the bracelet to insert or extract an interchangeable charm.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,427,487 (Morgan), U.S. Pat. No. 5,414,948 (Kudo), U.S. Pat. No. 6,588,067 (Efron), U.S. Pat. No. 6,026,658 (Weller), U.S. Pat. No. 4,374,470 (Isaacson), and U.S. Pat. No. 6,742,359 (Takessian) all disclose jewelry items with interchangeable inserts. Each of these jewelry items requires manipulation of moving or moveable parts in order to change and secure an insert. As such the act of insertion is time consuming for the jewelry wearer. Furthermore, moving parts are susceptible to break down.
Accordingly, there is a need for an interchangeable jewelry insert that can be conveniently attached to or detached from a jewelry item.